{"id":4093,"date":"2019-01-13T14:10:14","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T19:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/effect\/?p=4093"},"modified":"2019-01-14T11:05:04","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T16:05:04","slug":"discovery-at-snake-river-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/effect\/2019\/01\/13\/discovery-at-snake-river-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovery at Snake River – again?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tom Morehouse is one of Jack Kirby’s biggest fans and scholars. He built a significant collection, a.k.a. his Kirby Krypt, which contained every one of Kirby’s U.S. published works (note the past tense, he sold it years ago), and continues to study Kirby’s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tom recently reached out and asked “What was the name of the Australian ‘Snake River’ comic, again? Because I think I found it.” I reminded him it was “Showdown at Snake River<\/a>“, and we talked more. Turns out he’d asked an auction seller about a Black Rider story that was listed in a comic they were selling. They replied it was titled “Guns Roar at Snake River!’ and sent along a low quality snapshot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Low res, indeed!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

And there it was. A Kirby splash for a previously unknown Black Rider story! The circular lower left panel was a big clue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cover to Black Rider #21, dated March 1954. Art by Syd Shores with Carl Burgos and color by Stan Goldberg<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Some background: the first Black Rider comic book series published by Timely\/Atlas\/Marvel publisher Martin Goodman started with #8 dated March 1950. Publication took a hiatus between issues #18, January 1952, and #19, November 1953. Then, its name was changed to Western Tales of Black Rider<\/em> with issue #28, dated May 1955, and ran until #31, dated November 1955. Jack Kirby was not involved in any of these comics. (Thanks GCD!)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cover to Black Rider vol 2 #1, dated September 1957.
Art by John Severin and color by Stan Goldberg.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

However, two years later Goodman started a new quarterly Black Rider<\/em> series, dated September 1957<\/a>. With a beautiful cover by John Severin, the issue contained three Black Rider stories across nineteen pages by Jack Kirby, the seven page “The Legend of the Black Rider!”, the six page “Duel at Dawn”, the six page “Treachery at Hangman’s Bridge!”, a four page story by Bob Powell, and a text story with illustrations by Gene Colan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n